Background
Yates is a former foreign correspondent, national correspondent and editor at the Chicago Tribune. During a 25-year career at the Tribune, he accumulated extensive international experience. He lived and worked 18 years as a foreign correspondent in Japan, Southeast Asia and Latin America, where he covered several wars and revolutions from the 1970s into the 1990s, including the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975, the Tiananmen Square tragedy in Beijing in 1989, and political upheavals in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and The Philippines. He also covered wars and revolutions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Colombia. His reporting won several awards, including the Inter-American Press Association Award, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Peter Lisagor Award and three Edward Scott Beck Awards for foreign reporting.

Research/Creative Endeavor
Yates is the author of “The Kikkoman Chronicles: A Global Company with A Japanese Soul” and “Aboard The Tokyo Express: A Foreign Correspondent’s Journey Through Japan”, a collection of columns translated into Japanese. He is currently working on a novel and a book based on his experiences as a foreign correspondent in Asia from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Its working title is “The Last Rickshaw Home: A Foreign Correspondent’s Journey Through Asia.”

Related Links

Yates to step down as Dean of College of Media (March 20, 2009)
More information on Yates’ courses and career: yates.ds.uiuc.edu/new/
Photos of Dean Yates’ going away party (June 23, 2009)